rook

I haven't been posting here (or anywhere really) as I've been feeling pretty apathetic towards everything over the last few months. I've been pretty dissatisfied with my life and it's been manifesting in a lethargy that I'm I'm getting tired of suffering under.

I've been trying to change, or to make changes, to deal with it. I'm only just getting started and while on the whole I'm starting to feel better, some days, like today, I still feel pretty disenfranchised.

I did a bit of soul searching recently, questioning why I wasn't as happy as I should be. I like my job (I'll probably never find another job so well suited to my passions and abilities), I have great friends and (when I can be bothered keeping up with it) a healthy social life. I'm (relatively) young and (also relatively) healthy. I have no good reason to be feeling as unfulfilled as I have been.

I kind of made myself recognise (it wasn't a realisation, per se) that I was the trouble. I wasn't dissatisfied with my life, but with myself. And to that end, most of the changes I'm making are inwardly-directed.

I'm a pessimist. I haven't always been (which gives me hope that I can change), but some of the events in my life have made me painfully aware of how easily the things you love and depend on can disappear from your life. Knowing that...really knowing it...affects how you view and interact with the world around you. It stops you getting close to anything.

Unfortunately, keeping the world at arms length makes for a pretty hollow existence. Which is why, I realise now, I was feeling unfulfilled. I wasn't letting anything close enough to affect me. Which, while it undermines the ability of life to hurt you, it also prevents anything from touching you (in a positive way) as well. It also makes for a pretty bleak outlook on the future. It's kind of self-renewing and self-fulfilling that way.

I'm not sure how to change my outlook to optimism, but I'm making some changes to at least give myself some perspective and something to strive for.

Firstly, and this is something of a confession as well, I've stopped sleeping with every woman that will have me. I got pretty manic about it for a few months. I won't go into the details here, though.

I came to the realisation that I was only sleeping around as a way to get some human intimacy without opening myself up to an emotional connection. Casual sex is fine, I'm a big fan of it. But I was circulating though women in a way that went beyond casual sex. I was actively spreading myself around to ensure that there was no chance of any emotional involvement, in either direction.

As of now, I'm ending that behaviour. I won't say I'm going celibate, but, now that I'm aware of what I was doing, I'm going to stop it. It's already making me feel better about myself (although my libido isn't coping with the change too well!).

Also, I've started a pretty solid savings plan with a view to doing some intense travelling in twelve or eighteen months. I've always wanted to see the world but I've never found the resources (time, money or motivation) to do it. I hope to get enough of all of all three together between now and then to make an abridged tour of the globe. I don't expect to 'find' myself out there, but I do know that I'll change on the way, and at the moment some change is all I'm striving for. It's given me something to look forward to, which I haven't had in far too long.

The good thing about this plan is that, in order to achieve it, I need to make some immediate and measurable changes in my day-to-day life. No more $250 drink binges, no more buying lunch every day. I've even switched to rolling my own cigarettes (I know I should give up, but smoking is, for me, a way of externalising some internal shit, so I'm not ready to quit just yet).

Maybe I'll keep posting about how things are going here, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll succeed and find a new way to be happy with myself, and maybe it will all just fall in a heap. But for now, I'm trying, and that's better than nothing.